In the US you’d not be happy if you were involved in the cancelled $160 billion FCS program, but if you build military trucks and/or MRAPs you’d be over the moon
argued France, Germany and the UK reduced their expenditure, leaving only China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the US to have in transparent terms increased expenditure for 2010. In the broadest sense, while many of the top defence spenders are the more developed countries, they are also the more stable and certainly less aggressor threatened, and irrespective of interpretation (moreso when talking of ‘stay-at-home’ armed forces) the defence budgets of these countries can best collectively be described as stagnating. However, as with all things statistics related, the waters can easily be muddied… Taking Italy, Japan and Spain as global top 15 spender
examples, their defence budgets dropped but as manpower levels dropped also, the amount of spend per man actually increased… However, as one door closes partially, another opens slightly to compensate, and while post Cold War defence spending in the bulk of European/NATO countries stagnates, there is a projected boom in Asia and the Middle East. Between 2005- 2009 Russia (23%) and the US (30%) dominated global defence sales, with 75% of US sales going to the Middle East, Asia & Oceania, and 69% of Russian sales going to Asia & Oceania. Middle Eastern expenditure will always remains oil price-related, but with regard to Asia, a recent Frost & Sullivan report suggests that irrespective of economic downturn, by 2016 Asia will account for 32% of global military spending, with North America’s share dropping to 29%; not so much a global reduction, more a reallocation…
Like reading tea leaves…
The pitfalls of something like defence spend projection are considerable, as mid-2009 projections from some analysts that US defence spending had peaked and was about to reduce
by as much as 15%, clearly shows. This reduction, the impact of which on the defence industry by a ‘customer’ that accounts for almost 50% of total spend should not ignored, never occurred. In fact, rather than reducing the current fiscal 2011 US defence budget calls for a 3.4% increase to the Pentagon’s base $549 billion budget, plus $159 billion to fund ongoing US military overseas missions - now known as Overseas Contingency Operation (OCO).
Had OCO not been quite what it now is, quite what the US defence budget may have been and how it would have faired amidst the current financial crisis, nobody will ever know. In the same way, quite how much of the current $549 billion base budget will actually fund/sustain OCO in one way or another, and in addition the requested $159 billion, is something else that will never be known, and primarily because it is largely incalculable… To put current US figures into perspective, the defence budget rose >75% between 2000 and 2009, although it is not contested that OCO have and are bolstering this budget, keeping it higher than it might otherwise be. The US is not alone
U.S. Soldiers with 3rd Zone Security Forces Advisory Team arrive in their Mine Resistant
Ambush Protected vehicles at Forward Operating Base Black Hawk, Afghanistan, Dec. 22, 2009. (U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Efren Lopez)
12
G4 DEFENCE
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